Kosmos 66 (russian: Космос 66 meaning ''Cosmos 66'') or Zenit-2 No.27 was a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

, first generation, low resolution, optical film-return reconnaissance satellite launched in 1965. A

Zenit-2 The Zenit-2 is a Ukrainian, previously Soviet, expendable carrier rocket. First flown in 1985, it has been launched 37 times, with 6 failures. It is a member of the Zenit family of rockets and was designed by the Yuzhmash. History With 13– ...

spacecraft, Kosmos 66 was the twenty-seventh of eighty-one such satellites to be launched and had a mass of . Kosmos 66 was launched by a Vostok-2 rocket, serial number R15002-04, flying from Site 31/6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The launch took place at 09:50 GMT on 7 May 1965, and following its successful arrival in orbit the spacecraft received its Kosmos designation; along with the

International Designator The International Designator, also known as COSPAR ID, is an international identifier assigned to artificial objects in space. It consists of the launch year, a three-digit incrementing launch number of that year and up to a three-letter code repr ...

1965-035A and the

Satellite Catalog Number The Satellite Catalog Number (SATCAT, also known as NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense) Catalog Number, NORAD ID, USSPACECOM object number or simply catalog number, among similar variants) is a sequential nine-digit number assigned by the Un ...

01362. Kosmos 66 was operated in a

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never mor ...

, on 7 May 1965 it had a

perigee An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion. General description There are two apsides in any ell ...

of , an

apogee An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion. General description There are two apsides in any ell ...

of , an

inclination Orbital inclination measures the tilt of an object's orbit around a celestial body. It is expressed as the angle between a reference plane and the orbital plane or axis of direction of the orbiting object. For a satellite orbiting the Eart ...

of 65.0° and an

orbital period The orbital period (also revolution period) is the amount of time a given astronomical object takes to complete one orbit around another object. In astronomy, it usually applies to planets or asteroids orbiting the Sun, moons orbiting planets ...

of 89.3 minutes. On 15 May 1965, after eight days in orbit, the satellite was deorbited so that its return capsule could be recovered and its photos analysed, however, the mission was unsuccessful because a parachute deployment failed and the spacecraft was destroyed in the subsequent crash.

References

Kosmos satellites Spacecraft launched in 1965 Spacecraft which reentered in 1965 Zenit-2 satellites {{USSR-spacecraft-stub